The Home Stretch — Katie Spence

Hi friends. I'm writing this sitting back in my bed in DC, and boy does that suck. I'll save these emotions for another post later though, because we're a few days back on the blog and there's still so much to talk about!

When I last left off I was talking about the sand dunes. As the last "cool thing" we were doing on the trip, they totally lived up to it. We spent a good amount of time just hanging out climbing hills and taking photos, and it was so nice to be able to do something that G could enjoy too.

The afternoon ended in abject horror though when the clouds covered the sun and a sandstorm fresh out of Dune came for us in a matter of seconds. Sand dunes and wind are no joke -- the sand stung on our skin and we literally had to run for cover and I thought for sure we were done for. It was not bueno.

By the time we made it back to the car and out of the park, we realized we'd spent way longer there than we thought. Our next thing, Meow Wolf, came to us recommended by a coworker who grew up in Santa Fe and when we found out what it was (awesome local art installation funded in part by George RR Martin) we knew we had to go. We planned our entire day working around the time constraints of it closing at 8 and not being open on Tuesdays at all, but since we spent so much time at the Sand Dunes, we realized we weren't going to make it. It was an absolute bummer to miss but we'll make a point to go again next time we're in the area.

We're pretty sure we're gonna go back because for Santa Fe on a Monday night, it turned out being one of our favorite spots on the trip. Our Airbnb was easily the most beautiful and hospitable on the entire trip, situated in a tiny guest house in the hills overlooking the sunset. It was stunning, and our hosts were so kind we were probably one more night away from asking if they would adopt us so we could move in and stay forever.

We grabbed some dinner at a local spot we were told had been on the food network, which was basically our only requirement for anywhere we ate on the trip. Santa Fe was basically the first spot since South Dakota where we actually had clear skies, so when we got back, we sat out on the back porch and checked out the stars.

plz excuse the giant green splotch -- consequences of forgetting the tripod meant we had nowhere to rest the camera for star pics and there was a plant on the table i sat it on

We reluctantly left Santa Fe the next morning to head to our next stop -- Oklahoma City. The purpose of this stop was pretty much just to get a halfway point between SF and Nashville, but since Dyl's a college football guy we figured it'd be fun to check out the University of Oklahoma while we were around. It was, surprise, another super rainy day, but not much was going on on campus so we decided to take a little walk... onto the field.

Though I wouldn't trade my 4 years at BU for anything, it was definitely a cool experience checking out a school that had a real "campus" and a huge football program. Seeing the stands and all the statues and banners in honor of former football players got me really pumped for what I was going to see in the Tech game that next weekend.

With our time in OKC coming to a close, we had two destinations left: Nashville and Blacksburg. Since Banff, they're both the longest we stayed in a single place on the trip, so there's a lot to discuss that I'll save for another post. In the meantime though I've added a bunch more photo galleries up of what we've seen so far so check those out!